'Zappa' Category

“If ya wanna have a world of well performed orchestra music, you’re gonna have to spend the money to do it. Now, where ya gonna get the money? Well, you know, if you were to shut down some of these places that make tritium for nuclear warheads, which we don’t really need, you could have one hell of a musical culture in the United States just by shutting down … one! … of those facilities, which is making the environment polluted, and it is questionable whether we really need, we got plenty of nuclear warheads. We could blow up the world five times over right now. Why do we need to make more of this stuff? I’m baffled.”

Kongar-ol Ondar, the Tuvan throat singer who attended one of FZ’s 1993 music parties and got as close to mainstream culture as any throat singer had before (or since), died aged 51 last July following a brain haemorrhage. Frank’s fondness for and adoption of Tuvan styles in his later work is something that makes his untimely passing all the more upsetting — Dio Fa sets a pretty high bar for fusing the unusual with the unusual, and we are left only to imagine the possibilities.

In tribute to Ondar, the ZFT posted a Synclavier piece featuring his vocals to the ‘of consequence’ section of Zappa.com. There’s not much to go on aside from a hint dropped by the Idiot Bastard, but it’s very possible that this piece is from the legendary, unreleased Dance Me Thisalbum, and is likely (at least an excerpt from) ‘Calculus’, a piece executed with Synclavier software created by Todd Yvega designed to follow the Tuvan’s no-beat ‘free time’ rhythms.

A helpful person has uploaded the piece to YouTube, and it’s embedded below. Now if the ZFT could prioritise Dance Me This and The Rage and TheFury for release ahead of all the Roxy business (which has been going on for decades anyway), that’d make for a great 2014. Arf!

Between my recent purchase of the BB Preamp, and the NAMM 2012 show yielding a deluge of YouTube clips of new and wonderful gear, I’ve fallen into a pedal craze. Over the past couple of weeks I’ve spent hours and hours on YouTube binges, checking out some cool and crazy stuff. And it was on one of these binges that I discovered the TWA Triskelion, which I am now absolutely dying to try out.

Last time I was shopping in Denmark Street, I asked the staff in a exclusively-FX store about a semi-mythical piece of kit from ’70s which was a favourite of FZ – the Systech Harmonic Energizer. (Also, the pedal with the coolest name ever.) The guy in the store hadn’t heard of it, sadly. I wasn’t surprised particularly – the odds of him having heard of it were pretty slim, and the odds of him having one in stock were way slimmer still. But hey, it’s always worth asking, right?

So, as you might imagine, when I discovered the TWA Triskelion I was pretty excited. This is a 21st-century, full-fat, beefed-up take on the original Systech designs from the ’70s – a crazy, sweepable parametric EQ with global- and frequency-boost controls. As it transpires, Dweezil runs three (!!!) of these pedals in his rig, specifically for Po-jama People, but also for adding some honk to other solos. Well, it retails for $350 and isn’t exactly the most versatile…or should I say broadly applicable of pedals, but this is what I’ve been cocking a Cry Baby to emulate since forever.

Firmly on the shopping list. Although I hate the LEDs.

Here’s some clips from YouTube of the Triskelion in action. The first couple demo some the pedal on its own and with an expression pedal, and the third features the Dweez talking about and playing the pedal.

The internet has done its level best to plaster passages from the Jobs biography all around over the last few days. Being it that I prefer to read the thing, y’know, as a book rather than in 250 word chunks of recycled SEO-fodder, I’ve been limiting my browsing over the past couple of days. It’s the same process that I go through after most WWDC keynotes, not wanting the surprise ruined.

I happened across a real diamond on YouTube over the weekend, a 7-part Zappa video entitled ‘The Lost Interview‘. It’s about an hour long but is in 10 minutes segments, so that’s a clip a day for just shy of a week. Frank hated interviews, but they were a necessary promotional mechanism for his various wares. This, however, was not a promotional appearance. According to Kill Ugly Radio, the footage was Frank’s talking-head contribution to a documentary about cultural change from 1960 onwards. It appears totally unedited, the source is unclear, and it is absolutely worth taking in the whole thing.

GTA Five has appeared on Rockstar‘s homepage. Apparently there will be a trailer in a couple of weeks, which is very exciting indeed, although the announcement has already added more $$$ to my video game shopping list for Q4 (MW3, Halo, MGS), which is not so great. Trying to find some more info on the game, I ended up getting sucked into a Wikipedia vortex reading about the first GTA instalment from the ’90s, looking back fondly on a childhood spent stealing cars and running over pedestrians. I was also reminded that GTA III will soon be released for my shiny new iPhone 4S, so I can steal cars and run people over anywhere I like!

From the final tour. The full show, kindly uploaded to YouTube by user GeorgeLupine3. Watching this right now, but obviously material like this requires immediate sharing. This is a high budget show: the horn section, the size of the band, the Synclavier in the middle of the stage…reminds me of seeing James Brown and Stevie Wonder, but with the mustard Strat, solos, humour, a conductor’s baton and all the rest. Awesome.

This comes via Andrew Greenaway on the Twitter and is the work of Carl King & others on YouTube.

Certainly a wonderful and very creative tribute, and the audio captures Frank at his best; I don’t think there’s any way you would contest a solid block of argument like this. Really fantastic visuals (and a great score).